


An Old Friend

by nowwhateinstein



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, Episode: s07e11 Closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 13:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9900938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowwhateinstein/pseuds/nowwhateinstein
Summary: Drabble written for @leiascully‘s XFWritingChallenge: Toys on tumblrTimeline: Sometime after SUZ+Closure (SPOILERS)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble written for @leiascully‘s XFWritingChallenge: Toys on tumblr  
> Timeline: Sometime after SUZ+Closure (SPOILERS)

It’s a rainy Saturday when he finds it going through some old boxes: Mr. Beans, Samantha’s stuffed rabbit. She’d named it for the beans that weighed down its bottom and made it sit upright. 

Gently, almost reverently, he extracts it from the box’s other contents. It’s shabby and worn in several places; he runs his thumb over its once-pink - now threadbare - nose. The rabbit’s left ear bears conspicuous black stitch marks. The ear ripped during a fight they’d had, he remembers. Samantha had tearfully sewn Mr. Beans’ ear back together while he, refusing to apologize, shut himself in his room and pretended to forget the incident by organizing his baseball cards. He feels ill at the memory. 

***  
It’s the morning after her disappearance. 

After the police leave, he ventures into her room. Mr. Beans lies face-down in the middle of her unmade bed, forgotten by everyone but him, it seems. Mr. Beans was Samantha’s entire world. He went with her everywhere when she was younger: to school, to the grocery store, to the beach. She talked to him as if he were a real person, confiding in him her hopes and fears. Not anymore. He thinks about how frightened his sister must be without it, wherever she is. That’s when it hits him that she is really gone.

He picks up the bunny and hugs it to his chest. His tears fall on its soft head, as her tears must have done countless times in the past, when she was angry, or hurt, or sad. “I’m sorry,” he tells Mr. Beans, not sure if he’s talking to his sister, or to this object that holds so many memories of her, or both. “I’m sorry.” 

He sleeps with Mr. Beans every night until he’s sixteen. He doesn’t want to forget her: her smile, her laugh, the way she’d hug him around the waist (when he’d let her) and call him “Buttmunch.” Mr. Beans links him to those memories, to her. If his parents notice this odd habit, they don’t say anything; they are too wrapped up in their own grief to notice or care about how their son handles the loss of Samantha. 

Mr. Beans accompanies him to Oxford, where it sits on his desk as he studies, reminding him of what he’s lost - and what he hopes to one day find again. It earns him a few jokes from his friends, who can’t resist pointing out the the parallels to Lord Sebastian and his teddy bear, Aloysius in ‘Brideshead Revisited.’ A few years later, at the Academy, he’ll see his Oxford friends’ ribbing as a benign foreshadowing of the name-calling he gets from his peers: “Spooky,” for believing that his sister was abducted by aliens. He’ll be grateful for the opportunity it afforded him to grow a thick skin and cultivate a “don’t give a shit” attitude. 

When he moves into his new apartment in Alexandria, he doesn’t bother to unpack Mr. Beans. He’s too preoccupied with his discovery of the X-Files and what it means about the possibility of finding Samantha. At last, he has the time and resources to devote to finding her. His work becomes his new hope - and his obsession. His sister’s bunny remains tucked away in a box in back of his bedroom closet. Forgotten, until now.

***  
Later that day, he takes Mr. Beans with him into the office and places him besides Samantha’s photo. On Monday, he walks in and sees Scully holding the rabbit. “I remember reading about him in your sister’s diary.” She speaks to the stuffed animal, but the words are for him. “She missed him almost as much as she missed you.”

“He was her constant companion as a kid,” he says, reaching out to stroke Mr. Beans’ head. “He became mine after she disappeared.”

“And now?”

He smiles sadly as he takes the rabbit from her. “Now, he’s an old friend who deserves to be with the girl who loved him.” He puts Mr. Beans back on the desk, next to Samantha.


End file.
